changes to the Kiddies Kitchen website
Just a couple of small changes to the Kiddies Kitchen website to report : I've changed the way in which we catalogue the baby food so that, as well as shopping by brand, you can now also shop by age suitability as well. Hopefully this will make it easier to see which foods are suitable at which age and take some of the guess work out of shopping. Also now on the website are a small range of wooden highchairs (and a couple of booster and travel seats as well) and a fantastic new nappy disposal system from Vital Baby. The Nappysafe uses normal bin bags to wrap the used nappies rather than the special cassette systems that other products use and so it can be substantially cheaper to run than some of its competitors. Have a look and see what you think.
There comes a point when you have to bite the bullet and start the weaning process. Current recommendations are to wait until around 6 months, but some babies may be ready earlier - say from around the 4 month mark. But what do you actually do? Where do you start? Particularly if you are starting weaning early these first meals are going to be little more than tastes and experiments. Most people seem to start with some baby rice (We stock Organix Organic Baby Rice). This mixes with milk or water to a smooth puree and is, to be honest, a pretty taste-free experience, however it can form the basis of a fuit or vegetable puree diluting the strength of the flavour a little. You would then move on to fruit and vegetable purees. If you cook these youself these baby food freezer trays are invaluable as are a huge number of bowls and plastic food storage items. An alternative to all that mashing and pureeing is to use a commercial baby food such as Plum Baby , or frozen purees such as Truuuly Scrumptious (which we stock in the shop, telephone us is you want to arrange a mail order delivery). These are both suitable from 4 months.
First weaning - from 4-6 months
There comes a point when you have to bite the bullet and start the weaning process. Current recommendations are to wait until around 6 months, but some babies may be ready earlier - say from around the 4 month mark. But what do you actually do? Where do you start? Particularly if you are starting weaning early these first meals are going to be little more than tastes and experiments. Most people seem to start with some baby rice (We stock Organix Organic Baby Rice). This mixes with milk or water to a smooth puree and is, to be honest, a pretty taste-free experience, however it can form the basis of a fuit or vegetable puree diluting the strength of the flavour a little. You would then move on to fruit and vegetable purees. If you cook these youself these baby food freezer trays are invaluable as are a huge number of bowls and plastic food storage items. An alternative to all that mashing and pureeing is to use a commercial baby food such as Plum Baby , or frozen purees such as Truuuly Scrumptious (which we stock in the shop, telephone us is you want to arrange a mail order delivery). These are both suitable from 4 months.
A word about Moltex Nappies
Although most of our lines are food related, we also deal with the "other end", and are seeing an increased demand for environmentally friendly nappies and other organic/biodegradable changing paraphenalia. The best eco-friendly nappies we have found are by Moltex. These excellent nappies are completely compostable and even come in biodegradable packaging. They contain no chlorine or bleaching agents and use a minimal amount of gel to draw moisture away from baby's skin. Unlike some eco-disposables they have a good elasticated waistband with velcro fastenings, and are a pretty good fit around the legs (I would say no more leaky than conventional disposables). Personally we use them on my son at night and if we go away (he's in washables the rest of the time). In fact here at Kiddies Kitchen we have even put together a "washable wearers weekend away kit" which contains 1o moltex nappies (your choice of size), ten biodegradable nappy sacks and a pack of 24 biodegradable wipes. All available from our website at a bargain price of £5.00. Moltex nappies come in 4 sizes and we do multibuys at 3 packets for £30.00. Individually prices range from around £10.00 t0 £12.00 per packet depending on the size. Another great product for use with the disposable nappies would be the Vital Nappysafe (£44.99 fom Kiddies Kitchen). This award winning nappy disposal system works with standard bin bags rather than the fancy cassettes that many other systems use and could save you £100's in the first year alone. Plus you could use biodegradable bin bags so that you can simply chuck the whole thing out when it is full and not worry about the landfill consequences.
Goats milk formula
This doesn't yet seem to be common knowledge but on 17 September the Department of Health issued new instructions to all health professionals that infant milk formulas based on goats milk protein are not suitable as a source of nutrition for infants under 12 months of age. You can read the full text of the circular on the Department of Health Website but the essence of it is that they do not recommend its use and have contacted distributors and manufacturers to ask them to stop marketing the product in the UK. It goes on to explain that there is no evidence to show incidence of allergic reaction is lower using goat based formula than when using cow based formula. Its illegal for a non-qualified person to give advice relating to baby formula and therefore I am not going to add any comments other than to relay the facts as set out in the circular, however I know for a fact that at least one retailer is still selling the best known goats milk based baby formula. Parents who are concerned about the situation should consult their medical practitioner, health visitor or midwife as there are alternatives that can be prescribed for infants with diagnosed milk protein allergy.
Enough of the lunchboxes: lets start at the beginning
Although we at Kiddies Kitchen stock a number of items that are suitable for school lunchboxes our focus is really on providing real food for babies, toddlers and pre-school children. Right from the first day of weaning we think that giving your son or daughter good wholesome food is vitally important. There are lots of resources out there for parents who want guidance on how and when to wean their children and these tend to suggest that the baby should be at least 4 months and usually 6 months old before weaning takes place. opinions vary but it seems that the common ground is no solids before 17 weeks at the very earliest in order to give yor baby's digestive system time to mature enough to cope with solids. Obviously all this can be discussed with your GP and or midwife and health visitor. I might talk a bit about the dreaded purees later on but the first thing to get right is the basic equipment. Personally my son was starving hungry from about 5 months so we started weaning at that point with organix baby rice and then a variety of fruit and vegetable purees. We cooked these in bulk and froze them as cubes. I could go on for a long long long time about the inadequacies of ice cube trays, and the relative merits of the specially designed baby food freezer trays on the market but I won't. The summary of my extensive research is as follows: - Ice cube trays are useless for this. Cheap or expensive all they will do is crack and split as soon as you try and get food cubes out of them.
- The individual lidded freezer cubes are great BUT we had a habit of overfilling them which caused too much expansion and usually resulted in the lids being forced off and broken. Also the food stays in them until you want to defrost it. Cook up more than a pot full of puree and you are back on the internet ordereing a whole lot more freezer cubes!
- The absolute best baby food freezer tray we found was the Pea in a Pod tray (just scroll down the second page of the food storage category). I am not exaggerating when I say that we have used a pair of these trays non-stop for over 6 months without them cracking, splitting or snapping. They are the only baby food freezer tray that I will sell in the shop and combined with a few freezer bags are all you need to completely fill your freezer with little cubes of food.
Do you need a fancy blender? Probably not. We used a potato ricer for a lot of things. The Baby Dan Food Mill is also quite handy. A little later on a hand blender was great for soups and so on. Other essentials: A high chair (obviously). Because we weaned a little early we found that feeding him in a Baby Bjorn bouncing chair (there you go a plug for something that we don't sell) was really handy as you could get him pretty upright but it gave more support than a normal highchair until he was able to support himself. The all wooden East Coast High Chair we use at home has been great and is nice and wipecleanable (if thats a word). A waterproof floormat - its much easier to wash a mat than constantly was the floor and beleive me the food will get on the floor no matter how careful you are. Bowls, and you'll need more than you ever imagined. Cutlery and stuff is a whole other topic and no doubt we'll come back to it soon. Suffice to say we stock a whole range of excellent items
Now you've got a lunch box and a nifty thermos food jar you need to start thinking again about the really tricky bit - what to put in it. Apparently nearly 90% of lunchboxes contain a sandwich or other "bread based" food (I think they mean a roll), and nearly 70% have a packet of crisps. The Food Standards Agency has a useful website which gives some ideas on what healthy alternatives could be with two weeks of ideas, all the nutritional information and even estimated costs. They also explain what is recommended in the way of salt, fat and sugar intake. To liven things up a snack bar is often a good idea. Be warned though - not all snack bars are the same - many are loaded with added sugar. At Kiddies Kitchen we have a good selection of bars with no added sugars. These include Peter Rabbit Organics bars which are dairy free, wheat free, soya and egg free, the Kidz Break range of fruit and cereal bars (raisin, chocolate flavour and blackcurrant, and the Kidz fruit bars which are 100% organic fruit. No added sugar means that whilst these products are still quite high in sugars they contain only natural fructose rather than processed glucose sugars. The Peter Rabbit range also includes vegetable crisps cooked in sunflower oil with no added sugar which can make a nice alternative to crisps.
lunchboxes -1
Its that time of year when the minds of normal parents turn to thoughts of school dinners and packed lunches (a little late – but hey we’re only human). So, what do you give them? It’s easy when we’re still enjoying the last rays of summer: Sandwiches, rolls, baps , a piece of fruit or raw vegetables and a sweet or savoury treat, but it can all get a bit samey after a while. For a few ideas on how to jazz up a lunch box you could do worse than look at “lunchboxes” by Annabel Karmel (Ebury Press £6.99, available from Kiddies Kitchen) which has some great variations on the traditional ham sandwich – think tortilla wraps, pasta salads and the like. The next problem is what to take it in. There are hundreds of cheap plastic lunchboxes, but sometimes it is impossible to avoid the tyranny of branding. Our favourite is the Thermos Soft Lunchbox (£3.99, from Kiddies Kitchen). This is insulated to keep food chilled for three hours and has an elasticated bottle holder inside (bottle not included). Best of all its available in simple stylish all black or silver finishes without a cartoon character in sight. On the other hand, for the minimalist child a simple Thermos/Tupperware plastic box is often all that is needed. As the days get colder its nice to be able to send them with something hot. A wide mouth thermos flask is essential if you want to send them with chilli or pasta. The best we’ve found is the Thermos Coolkidz Funtainer (great name…). this is a small insulated food jar with a good wide neck opening so that its easy to get a spoon or fork into the food. Its available in pink, blue or gender neutral purple and is the ideal size and shape for a kids packed lunch or even for a nursery lunch for younger toddlers. I admit I was sceptical about the claims to keep food hot for 6 hours, but a recent trip to the beach put my mind at ease: As long as you follow the instructions the food really will still be hot after 6 hours. Thermos also do some very smart small flasks (£7.99) in the same bright colours as the funtainers and these would be good for a hot drink or reasonably liquid soup (anything chunky and homemade and I’d use a funtainer, because the flasks have quite a narrow neck). The whole of the Thermos Coolkidz range is available from Kiddies Kitchen either from their shop in Tavistock or online at www.kiddieskitchen.co.uk using a secure on-line payment facility.
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